Silent Hill 4 is a weird game to review. It started out its life as a game separate from the Silent Hill series but was converted over to Silent Hill halfway through development. None of the development teams from Silent Hill 1 through 3 worked on it except the series music composer, Akira Yamaoka, served as the producer. The game plays similarly but differently to past games to the series. Does the changes to the classic formula ruin the Silent Hill experience or does it serve to better it?

The story starts out with our protagonist, Henry Townshend, waking up in his apartment to find his windows locked shut, his electronics not working and his door locked from the inside with industrial strength locks and chains. It’s not long that he finds a hole in his bathroom that leads to an unknown location. Sensing his only chance of escape, he goes through but ends up in an alternate nightmarish world.

The biggest difference in the story this time is that the game doesn’t take place in Silent Hill. Instead, it takes place in South Ashfield, a small town that borders Silent Hill. The story, however, is tied to Silent Hill and its mythos in a big way. It explores the main working force behind the events that occur in Silent Hill. Fans of the previous games who want to know more about “The Order” will get their fill in Silent Hill 4.

VIOLENCE

The game is violent. That even seems to be an understatement. The beginning of the game opens with, “Some parts of this game may be considered violent and cruel.” They hit the cruel part right on. Part of the game is witnessing murders and they are always quite gruesome. In previous games, you could perform a stomp to kill the enemy after you downed them. This game focuses on combat more and therefore, the stomps are brutal and Henry even seems to relish in it. Some weapons also provide unique finishers such as the shovel where he impales the enemy in the back with the shovel and then stomps on the shovel. Hitting enemies causes more blood to appear than previous games.

LANGUAGE

Usual PG fare language. It’s more frequent than past games but still nothing horrible. It never made me feel like they were cursing just for the sake of cursing like some games do.

SEXUALITY

One of the first characters you meet asks you to accompany her. She promises a “reward” for your efforts. Granted, she never gets to fulfill this “reward” but it’s still there. Upon multiple playthroughs, you can unlock different outfits for characters. One of the characters is dressed in an S&M (Slave and Master) outfit and the other is a revealing nurse outfit. Neither is necessary as they are rewards for completing the game several times.

OCCULTIC MATERIAL

This is where every Silent Hill game gets its bad press from. The occult does play a major role in this game. More so than any of the previous Silent Hill games. What sets this game apart however is that your character is never participating in the events but rather fighting it. You read memos that explain the horrors this cult did and you really want to stop this. The main villain is a production of the cult’s twisted teachings. By the end of the game, I felt truly sorry for this man. I wanted to save him from all this. One of the other major gameplay innovations is that your room can become haunted and you have to use certain items that you find in the worlds that can exorcize these ghosts. The hauntings range from windows opening and closing to blood coming out of the faucet to demon babies appearing on the wall.

The gameplay is standard Silent Hill fare. Usually involves exploring environments, finding items to solve puzzles and fighting the various monsters that inhabit the worlds. The game puts more focus on combat so there are very few logic puzzles in the game. Most of the puzzles just involve gathering certain items and putting them somewhere else. The one that comes to mind most clearly is finding all 5 parts to a doll’s body and reattaching them to open an entrance.

The combat isn’t changed at all from previous Silent Hill games. You hold the Right Trigger in and press A to swing your weapon. The only change is that now you have a small yellow circle by your health meter that you can hold in the attack button to perform a charged super attack. It’s a high risk/high reward system that I found useful only in the most difficult of fights. Most fights you can do the usual regular swinging to down most enemies.

The other change is that you can no longer carry an infinite amount of items. You can only carry ten items on you at one time and same items do not stack. So if you want to carry two med-kits, that takes up two slots. This is why carrying guns and bullets is not wise as they take up so many slots. This adds a dose of strategy to item management as you must carry a weapon and some essential items but allow enough room for the items that you’ll find in the levels to solve puzzles with.

You can save at only one spot in the entire game. That spot is your room. Most levels have multiple portals back to your room though so it’s like having multiple savepoints per world but it’s kind of annoying sometimes having to travel back and forth. I think I watched the traveling through the hole scene back and forth from my apartment over 200 times.

About halfway through the game, it turns into an escort quest. You must escort Eileen through all the levels that you visited before with the villain constantly chasing you. If she dies, it’s game over. It’s an interesting mechanic but it gets really old especially when you’re doing it for the latter half of the game. The AI is smarter than Maria showed in Silent Hill 2 but it’s still pretty bad. At least she can equip a weapon and defend herself but this proves to be more problematic than it should be. When you’re trying to get to a door and exit the area, she’ll go after any remaining enemies to kill them instead of following you.

The graphics are fantastic. The environments have great texture work and really show off how far these games have come in making things look degraded and rusty. The character models are all motion captured so the facial expressions are spot on. The only problem is when you’re playing this game on the Xbox on an Xbox 360, there are some unfortunate graphical glitches that prevent the awesome facial expressions from truly shining. The problem is that whenever a character’s face changes expression to speak or make a different face, the facial model starts to crack open and holes appear in it. This is most annoying when a character has their eyes closed and you can see their eyes through their eyelids.

The voice acting is pretty good. The lines are delivered with enough “oomph” to keep it from sounding force but never get any better than that. They get the job done. The sound work is fantastic. You want to play this game with good speakers or headphones to hear all the industrial sounds and various screeching effects put into the levels. The music is also another reason the sound excels. Akira Yamaoka has definitely outdone himself this time with the music. The best part about the music is the vocal work that appears many parts in the game.

Silent Hill 4 is a worthy addition to the series. It’s definitely the most disturbing of the games thus far and it has a great atmosphere about it. A lot of the changes offer a different way of playing the game but don’t necessarily make it better. My final verdict is that Silent Hill 4 is a must for fans of the Silent Hill series but if you’re new to the series, this is not the game to start with.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Spotlight review are those of the reviewer (both ratings and recommendations), and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Eden Communications or the Christian Answers Network.

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John AlessandroApril 14, 2008

Silent Hill 4: The Room continues what has arguably been the most terrifying and visually disturbing game franchises ever created. The folks at Konami should be applauded for creating something so vicerally terrifying that it stays with you long after the game has been turned off.
That said. This is a deeply disturbing game that will likely offend practically everyone.

The story, begins when Henry Towsend awakens from a nightmare to find that he’s trapped in his apartment. Or, more accuratly, someone named Walter Sullivan has strung heavy iron chains across his door, sealed his windows and cut his phone lines. Shouting to his neighbors does very little good, since for some reason no one can hear him. After a couple of days a large portal appears in his bathroom which takes him to various locations of the not-terribly-tourist-friendly town of Silent Hill.

Graphics: Beautifully detailed (if gore-covered walls of living, rotting flesh could ever be considered beautiful), but somehow lacking. I think Silent Hill 3 did a better job. This one feels a bit rushed. Also how many forest/subway/prison/hospital settings does this town have? And why do we need to visit them multiple times in the game? Silent Hill 4 isn’t nearly as bad at this as Final Fantasy X-2 was. But it’s still annoying.

Sound: Um… who okayed the burping sound when one of the monsters gets hit? That’s just silly. Otherwise it’s what you’d expect from this series. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Voice acting is pretty good, though a little stilted. Henry has ZERO emotion, you’d think after the fourth or fifth neighbor to die horribly he’d register something like outright terror.

Gameplay: The game plays nearly identically to the previous installments. A reasonably intuitive 2D controller scheme helps avoid the dredded Resident Evil-style controller nightmare. Storywise, while interesting, SH4 isn’t quite as deep as Silent Hill 2, but thankfully not quite as offensive as Silent Hill 3. Problem is, the entire game has a disjointed “been there, done that” feel to it. Rather than walking from one end of the game to the other, you return frequently to your room before moving on to a new level. There’s no sense of continuity. No feeling that you’re moving deeper and deeper into a waking nighmare. Henry has a lifebar which is a welcome addition, but he con only carry a limited amount of items. This is further aggrivated by the fact that he can’t “stack” anything. 2 amo clips take up two spaces. Because you can’t drop any extra items there’s a lot of backtracking to your room to drop things off in the only storage box. Oh, and to be unreasonably sadistic the game designers felt that if your inventory was full there was no need to tell you what item you’re trying to pick up. Meaning you could conceivably backtrack through hordes of enemies for an item you didn’t really want in the first place.

Blood and Gore: What can I say, it’s gruesome. Not quite as gruesome as SH3, but it’s still a must avoid for young children or the easily squeemish. For your part, much of the violence is centered around killing various unidentifiable monsters. Blood abounds, but nothing uncommon to the style of game. Human-form enemies appear as Ghosts, who, try as you might, cannot be disposed of. As with most Silent Hill games, running from the bad nasties is always advised. The cut-scenes, however, are another matter. The story revolves around a serial killer with a penchant for carving codes into his victim’s flesh. There’s far too much graphic detail here, inculding a string of numbers carved into a woman’s chest, a graphic electrocution, an individual set on fire and another woman beaten almost to death.

Apropriateness: Do I really have to elaborate? The game is gruesome, but not without some (small) measure of redeaming value. The game continues the story of the Wish House Cult with all the blasphemous nonsense and child-abuse present in Silent Hill 3. Unlike it’s predecessor, however, Silent Hill 4 makes note of the fact that the cult members were deceived by Satan into THINKING they were worshiping God. Personally, someone would have to be pretty darn gullible to believe that anything in Silent Hill was heavenly, but that’s another story all together. Beyond that, the Mark of Samael makes a return and is seen pretty frequently (it’s a load screen animation). 2 children murdered by Walter Sullivan appear as a mutant 2-headed baby monster thing that’s extremely disturbing. There is Excessive violence against women. Women wear revealing clothing. One woman makes suggestive comments to Henry and attempts to touch him inapropriatly.

Commendable: The game makes note of the fact that the Wish House Cult had been deceived. Henry honorably protects his neighbor from harm (though depending on how well you do, he may not be able to protect her sanity). Walter Sullivan is finally stopped.

Overall: While not as uncontionably offensive and blasphemous as Silent Hill 3, this is still a Silent Hill game. Deeply disturbing and brutally violent, only the most mature gamers should even approach this one. Children should be kept far, FAR away. Honestly I miss the more psychological approach taken in Silent Hill 2. The gore is excessive and really unnecessary. Only die-hard fans of the series will really enjoy this game. Everyone else should probably just avoid it since it has nothing terribly interesting to add. Parents should make certain their children and young teens do not have access to this game (or any Silent Hill for that matter).

I think a Christian shouldn’t even play this game except for a review. Seriously, This game has been banned in several nations, and that is the world judging!! If we christians play BANNED games, I don’t think it shows a great witness for those unsaved.I agree with John, just stay away!

Parts of the world banned The Passion of the Christ. Does that mean that we shouldn’t watch it? I don’t think so. Our standards are in no way similar to the world’s.

Matt TriponeyOctober 7, 2008

I don’t know about that, Colonel Link. The Passion of the Christ was a film that was designed to make us think about the sacrifice Christ made for us. The violence, I think, was necessary to help us grasp that (having not seen the film myself, my stomach being sensitive as it is). This game, on the other hand…I really can’t see how it would draw you closer to God.
I think there does need to be a level of discretion when it comes to video games. And while that level of discretion may vary with what your belief system is, I do believe you need to think of the example you’re setting. And I’m not sure playing this game would really set you apart from the world.

That’s true. I’m not recommending this game AT ALL, I’m just saying that “if the world bans it, we should too” is a bad reason.

MimiDecember 12, 2008

>however, Silent Hill 4 makes note of the fact that the cult members were deceived by Satan into THINKING they were worshiping God.

Except that the cult in Silent Hill worships a female solar deity they call God because it was syncretized with Christianity when the original Native religion was adapted by settlers. (which is why the way to birth God by opposing sects supposedly births “the devil.”) For someone who plays SH3, you should know this.

>the Mark of Samael makes a return and is seen pretty frequently

It’s not the Mark of Samael. It’s the Seal of Metatron, again something referenced in the third game. Dahlia only calls it the Mark of Samael to deceive Harry. In any case both the angels Metatron & Samael, despite being opposites of eachother, are not against God according to myths about them. I suggest doing more research before pointing the finger.

Christian Gamers Code

The Christian Gamer is a believer in Jesus Christ as the way to eternal salvation (John 3:16). As a Christian, responsible to God for my actions and thoughts, I promise to choose my games carefully. My goal is to be a good witness in my purchasing decisions, in my game play with others, and in the use of my time.